At least 8 million Baby Boomers are facing hunger in the USA and may be more vulnerable to food insecurity than their older peers, according to a report released Thursday from the food bank network Feeding America and funded by AARP Foundation.
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InterFaith Health Executive Director Melissa Knight, left, listens while former patient Robin Collins speaks about losing 155 pounds and the difficulty of affording healthy food on a budget. The event announced a $1 million Humana Foundation grant with which InterFaith will help develop pilot technology to get affordable healthy food to underserved places.(Photo: Kristi L. Nelson/News Sentinel)Buy Photo

An update to this story corrects the spelling of Doug Haaland's name and his job title.

For more than 27 years, InterFaith Health Clinic has treated Knoxville's "working poor" and uninsured at its Gill Street location, which eventually grew to include a demonstration kitchen and wellness classroom for community education.

Now, thanks to a $1.02 million grant from the Humana Foundation and a partnership with a local technology company, InterFaith is revving up to take its mission of holistic health to the streets.

On Friday, InterFaith, along with the Humana Foundation and local company Catapult 4D, announced the large grant would fund a community-based pilot program in the Knoxville area to use technology to offset what experts call "social determinants" that can keep people from being healthy.

That includes barriers such as loneliness, hunger and mental health (although InterFaith has long provided mental health services on a sliding fee scale).

"So often, when 90 percent of your patient load makes minimum wage, the opportunity to buy healthy foods does not exist," said InterFaith Executive Director Melissa Knight. The Healthy Lifestyle demonstration kitchen and classes, funded by a $350,000 Humana Foundation grant, were "a step in the right direction, but it didn't take us across the finish line."

The yearlong grant will allow InterFaith and Catapult to partner on a project called "Truck to Table," which will give patients better access to fresh and nutritious foods where they live, as well as provide human interaction to people who are socially isolated, said Catapult 4D President Johan Larsen.

Larsen said he wasn't ready yet to give details of the Truck2Table technology, both because it's proprietary and it's still being developed. The general idea, however, is that Catapult, by changing the way the supply chain flows, would allow people in small pockets of the community to use technology to obtain affordable foods in a convenient way.

"At the end of the day, it has to be sustainable," Larsen said. "We believe this model will be able to hold its own. It will have revenue."

Knight acknowledged that it's unusual for nonprofit InterFaith to partner with a for-profit company but called this endeavor "cutting edge."

InterFaith was one of nine out of 75 applicants to receive the competitive grant, which can be renewable for up to two more years, if the project receives specific results in the next 12 months.

"A fun part of my job is coming to communities and seeing how they work collaboratively to solve problems," said Walter Woods, CEO of the Humana Foundation.

Food security — making sure people have enough to eat — and social connection are two goals of Humana Foundation, the philanthropic arm of insurer Humana Inc. This new program is linked to its Bold Goal initiative in Knoxville and several other U.S. communities. Humana aims to improve the population's health 20 percent by the year 2020.

"The goal's aspirational, but we have a start," said Doug Haaland, Humana Regional Medicare President for the Mid-South, who said community efforts in East Tennessee already have reduced the number of "unhealthy days" reported to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by residents by nearly 6 percent.

InterFaith Health Clinic provides medical, dental, and mental health and prescription drug services to the "working poor" and uninsured on a sliding fee scale. Since 1991, it's served more than 24,000 individuals in more than 400,000 visits. The clinic operates with a small paid staff, a large network of volunteers, and donations from individuals, foundations, area churches, city and county governments, civic organizations, the United Way of Greater Knoxville and the state of Tennessee.